The yellow first-down line that has become a staple of football broadcasts is coming to the America's Cup.

Thanks to improved graphics, viewers sitting in front of their TVs or computer screens will easily be able to tell which boat is ahead, see the line the boats will use as a final guide into the next turning mark and know when the fast 45-foot catamarans are within a certain number of boat lengths of the mark.It's all part of the modernized America's Cup, which is trying to become more fan-friendly by using wing-sailed catamarans, shorter races and courses that allow easy viewing from shore.The technology, called LiveLine, will debut with the first stop of the America's Cup World Series Aug. 6-14 in Cascais, Portugal. The AC World Series this year and next is a buildup to the 2013 America's Cup on San Francisco Bay.Stan Honey, who helped develop the yellow first-down line more than a decade ago, chuckled at the comparison."I guess some of the technology certainly is going to be included," said Honey, director of technology for the America's Cup Event Authority. "Obviously the thing we are highlighting is a little different. Basically, the principle objective is to take something that's important to a sport and hard to see, and make it easy to see."In a sport like sailing, that's huge. But it took some doing."The main technical difference is, in football, the cameras are mounted on tripods. You know where they are," Honey said. "It's real easy to measure pan and tilt. In sailing, the camera is in a helicopter and it's much tougher. You have to know the location of the copter to within a couple of centimeters. Also, the attitude, which is roll, pitch and yaw. You have to measure that really accurately, otherwise you put the lines in wrong place in the video. If you're 1,500 feet away from the racecourse and have the angle wrong, then you'll put the lines in the wrong place. So that's tougher."In past America's Cups, viewers would see either a live shot of the boats in which it was hard to tell which one was ahead, or an animated view with a line indicating which boat was ahead.Now they'll see a live shot of the catamarans with superimposed graphics."That's one of the frustrating things that we've all kind of experienced in previous cups," said Honey, who lives in Palo Alto, south of San Francisco. "If you look at the live video you can't really tell who's ahead. If you're looking at an animated view, you can see where they are on the course, who's gaining or losing, but not why, that a halyard just broke on one of the boats."The lines that will appear on the screen are the start-finish lines; ahead-behind lines; the laylines, which are the lines on either side of the course that show the approach to a mark; and the course boundaries. There will be circles indicating three boat lengths at the windward mark and six lengths at the downwind mark to define the zone in which the overlap rules apply.Capsizes will be a bonus, and there have been plenty of those as sailors adjust to the new boats.Organizers say this augmented reality from a helicopter will be the first time live graphic insertions have been done from a moving platform. It's driven by a GPS system that measures the race boats, mark boat and helicopter locations to two centimeters, and the attitude of the helicopter to one-twentieth of a degree."It's complicated and expensive," said Honey, who, besides being a technical whiz, is an accomplished sailor.He holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford and has won two Emmys for technical innovation in sports television, for the first-down line and the K-Zone for baseball.He also was named Rolex Yachtsman of the Year in 2010 after serving as navigator on the giant trimaran Groupama 3, which set the record for the fastest nonstop circumnavigation, a remarkable 48 days, 7 hours, 44 minutes and 52 seconds, to claim the Jules Verne Trophy. He previously was nominated for the award following his turn as the winning navigator during the 2005-06 Volvo Ocean Race with ABN AMRO One.America's Cup organizers held test sessions in New Zealand earlier this year and continued to refine the broadcast system in San Francisco.Oh, and it doesn't necessarily have to be a yellow line."That'll ultimately come down to a decision the director and producer will make," Honey said. "I like white or yellow, but the software can make any color you want."Jimmy Spithill, a 32-year-old Australian who skippered Oracle Racing to victory in the America's Cup in 2010, said team owner Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle Corp., has emphasized improved TV broadcasts to better appeal to the sporting public.Besides being broadcast in HD, there are plans for onboard cameras and having crew members wear microphones.The courses at the various ACWS stops, as well as on San Francisco Bay, will be shorter and more exciting than the ocean courses used in previous America's Cup in plodding sloops. Crews will have to make quick decisions as they approach the course boundaries on the high-performance cats, which should translate well on TV.The Louis Vuitton Cup for challengers and the America's Cup match will be sailed in 72-foot catamarans, which should be even more wet and wild than the 45-footers. The background will be dramatic, as the boats sail near the Golden Gate Bridge, zip around Alcatraz Island and come within several feet of the city front."The viewer really has to have an appreciation of how hard it is athletically to sail these boats, but also how high-pressure some of these decisions are," Spithill said during a recent news conference in San Francisco. "When you're in a confined space, when you're doing 50 mph, you really have to think ahead and you have to make decisions very, very quickly. In the old boats, you had plenty of time to make decisions. But in these boats it just comes up so quick."Oracle Racing CEO Russell Coutts, a four-time America's Cup winner, said there's going to be a noticeable difference between racing in the catamarans and the sloops used from 1992-2007."I think the old ones, you could probably see the start of the race, go away and have lunch, come back and not much has changed," Coutts said. "The new ones, if you go away for 30 seconds, you're going to miss a lot. There's a big difference."Coutts provided quite a bit of excitement in June when he capsized an AC45 on San Francisco Bay. He was thrown through the wing sail and into the water.Spithill said commentators will have more tools than before, with live data off the boats, multiple camera angles and possibly even interviewing sailors during races."I've got no doubt that we'll be able to bring this to the viewer, and the viewer watching it will feel part of the drama and get a real appreciation for it," Spithill said.Coutts quickly realized that the sailors will have to clean up their language."I don't know about you, Jimmy, but I'm going to have to learn a whole new language," said Coutts, a New Zealander."You should try Australian," Spithill cracked.America's Cup officials haven't announced a TV deal yet, but say the first AC World Series stop will be aired in more than 20 countries and streamed live on americascup.comCopyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.